I am confused by the 'New Hotel' sign. Is it on top of the house or is it at the back of the Van Fleet?
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ER...The Van Fleet apartments are seen briefly in the 35mm film from the 1940s. That "New Hotel" sign does seem oddly placed. See story below. Evidently a woman gassed herself in one of the apartments in the Van Fleet in 1912.

Internet Archive film ~ screen shot

More on the Van Fleet apartments. The Van Fleet, a three-story frame apartment house built in 1911 by Garrett & Bixby for citrus man Nelson Van Fleet. The 29 apartments were split between two- and three-room models, and it was in one of them on March 22, 1912, that Marie Higginson, 40-ish "and quite prepossessing," having failed to shoot herself in San Pedro last week, gassed herself in the kitchen. Her groans alerted Mrs. Francis Passmore across the hall. Found unconscious on a blanket on the kitchen floor with the oven door removed, Marie's purse revealed the gun and a copy of Walter Malone's poem "Opportunity"—a popular verse among self annihilators, for Joseph N. Vincent recently blew his brains out on Silverwood Hill with the last stanzas in his pocket.

The recent tragic events in Arizona brought up this information about Griffith Park:

"The National Fire Protection Association website lists the last wildland fire to kill more firefighters as the 1933 Griffith Park fire of Los Angeles, which killed 29. The biggest loss of firefighters in U.S. history was 343, killed in the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York.

From The Detroit News: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130701/NATION/307010035#ixzz2XpfZozfq"

LAFIRE.COM
At first, it looked like a small brush fire. And there seemed
to be almost unlimited manpower available to put it out.
Both workers and foremen figured it would be batted out quickly.

LAFIRE.COM

Suddenly, the wind shifted and the fire began to chase the workers.
Those who ran across the path of the advancing flames to the road
below generally found safety and help. Those who tried to run directly
away from the flames--downwind and uphill--were in many cases
less fortunate. This was the scene on the road between the Golf
Clubhouse and Girls' Camp.

LAPL
This panorama shows flame-scourged "death hill" where most of the victims of the Griffith Park fire met death in a raging inferno which caught up with them as they climbed for life up the slope shown in the right foreground. The men, workers on the county charities rolls, were laboring on roads high on the hills in background when a brush fire broke out in the park and they went down through the ravines to fight it. A breeze suddenly lashed the fire around the hill from the right and trapped the victims. The roaring flames spread at a speed of 35 or 40 miles per hour and the men, climbing up the steep hill were enveloped in flames and perished, some of them clutching at bushes and rocks, some of them trying to save fallen comrades. Others who ran sideways to the blaze escaped. When the fire was extinguished the bodies were carried from the hillside to a girls' camp at left. Twenty-six bodies have been recovered from the "No Man's Land" where the flames raged into Dam Canyon and Mineral Wells Canyon. Photo dated: October 7, 1933.

LAPL
Photo of the Griffith Park brush fire on October 3, 1933. View is looking up death canyon--safety on the left, death on the right. Photo dated: October 6, 1933.

USC

Photograph of a view of Griffith Park after the fire, showing the Santa Monica Mountains, October 4, 1933. Two shallow rivers flow in the tree-spotted dust in the bottom right corner of the view. Cylindrical structures can be seen in the short, tree-covered mountains at center. The flat area of the nearby city can be seen in the right distance.

rcarlton, I heard about this on the news and was hoping someone would look it up. -so sad.
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Quote:

Originally Posted by Noircitydame

It's great to see that slide and in color! Germain's went in 625-627 S. Hill in 1937, opening May 24. It's the 2-story building we've seen before next to the Banker's Building. 1926 to 1934 it had housed Polly's Cheerio Tearoom upstairs; Joe Pirrone took it over for a nightspot after that but not for long. Downstairs was a National Shirt Shops & New York Hardware Co. store. Germains gave it a streamline moderne makeover when they moved in. They also had a retail shop in the Kerckhoff Building (since 1918).

This one's been posted before - you can just see the "G" to the right.

Source: probably USC. Cropped from a larger photo I'd saved.

NCD, the Polly's Cheerio Tearoom sign has been added to the building by the time this photo was taken. (compare to your photo above)

People who were around half a year ago will remember I made a bit of a discovery as I was surfing around Google Maps and noticed that there were remnants of the houses that used to exist on Fremont Ave and directly adjacent to the legendary Court Circle. It took me and I think everyone here by surprise how these remains, hiding in plain sight, could have gone so unnoticed and undisturbed after all this time. But once someone made the connection that the property was coming up for redevelopment I made it a point that the next time I was in LA I would get my butt down there and document whatever was left.

Well I'm in and out of town a bunch this month, and this past Saturday, June the 29th I was able to borrow the company vehicle and head down just as the sun was trying to disappear for the day. Laws were broken and one camera battery was drained in order to bring you this overabundance of pictures.

But first a quick recap...this is the image that started my obsession:

You can see the bit of road and stairs next to the twin towers. That then brought me to streetview:

What the area looked like back in 1940:

And an overlay of the remnants still with us circa 2012:

-- --

Now on to the latest evidence, starting at the southern end aka Mignonette Street:

I was dismayed to see how much excavation had already taken place...

This was the most intact of the three stairwells. Also, the longer of the street stubs (the one that led to Court Circle) was virtually unrecognizable at far right.

Families, and perhaps later in its life some more hardscrabble folks, used to walk up and down these stairs every day, all the way up through the 1960s.

Looking north towards Temple Street:

Sadly, none of the bricks I came across had legible stampings on them.

Fragments abounded, however, and I made sure to pore over every one of them for clues of how far they date back.

What the heck are these ^ v things?

I love how these things can be so mundane and yet so damn intriguing.

What on earth is this?

Back down the stairs one last time...adios, amigo.

From the outside:

And one of the lot on the other side of Temple, also part of the redevelopment:

__________________Politicians, ugly buildings and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.

Don't see any evidence of Slim Dundee nor his peripatetic wife Anna today, but there's the backside of the Sentous next door to the club with the Hotel Atlantic next to it and the Hotel Pacific down on the corner at Sunset.

Man waiting at hotel entrance. Double-sided sign above door reads "N. Spring Hotel" on one side, and "Spring Hotel" on the other, the "N" having worn away. This is the hotel entrance on N. Spring Street side to the second floor of the Sentous Building. Note the sign above his head which says (PRINT)ING and then compare it to the sign in the pic above (right above the two jaywalking guys) which is the same 'PRINTING' sign. Doubly interesting to consider, Pio Pico himself likely passed through this very door, used those very stairs in the background.